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Paul Ryan budget hits storm aid, critics say

Governors from states hit hard by the storm praised the federal government’s response. | AP Photo

Kendall also said cuts under Ryan’s budget would prevent the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from launching a replacement polar satellite on time.

“The result would be devastating,” Kendall said. “Weather forecasts would be only half as accurate. Without this satellite, hurricane forecasters would not have been able to give Americans on the Eastern seaboard an accurate warning about Sandy.”

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Forecasters have relied on satellites polar satellites since 1960 to get accurate weather data on extreme weather events, and NOAA is working to replace an existing satellite by 2016, Kendall said.

In the aftermath of Sandy, governors from states hard hit by the storm, including Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, praised the federal government’s response to far. And he touted FEMA’s role in the state’s recovery.

“I expect FEMA to be a major force here over the next couple of months. And that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about months,” Christie said during a Tuesday morning briefing.

Romney’s stance on FEMA was propelled into the spotlight this week after the Huffington Post dug up a transcript from a June 2011 CNN primary debate in which Romney raised questions about the federal government’s role in responding to disasters.

“FEMA is about to run out of money,” debate moderator John King said to Romney during the debate pointing to the May 2011 tornado that killed more than 150 people in Joplin, Mo. “And there are some people who say, ‘Do it on a case-by-case basis.’ And there are some people who say, ‘You know what, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role.’ How do you deal with something like that?”

Romney responded that “every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.

“Instead of thinking in the federal budget, ‘What we should cut?’ we should ask ourselves the opposite question, ‘What should we keep?’” Romney added. “We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, ‘What are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do?’ And those things we’ve got to stop doing.”

“We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” Romney responded. “It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”

While it is unclear exactly what Romney meant to say in the exchange, the comments came as Republicans in Congress were insisting that money allocated for hurricane relief be offset by spending reductions elsewhere.

Just like the Romney-Ryan tax plan, they won't release details of the Ryan budget. For a good take on it, see:

http://nymag.com/daily/...

The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs. When President Obama explains what would happen if those cuts were allocated in an across-the-board fashion, Republicans scream bloody murder. And when any single one of those programs enters the political debate, they can deny plans to make any specific cuts: They won’t cut education, they won’t cut support for veterans, and so on.

Now, it is true that Republicans have no special animus against disaster response. They oppose domestic spending in general, and programs that either impinge upon business or redistribute income from rich to poor in particular. But the most concrete statement of Romney’s view of disaster spending came in a Republican debate last summer. John King, the moderator, asked Romney whether FEMA needed to be devolved to the states. Romney agreed and went farther......

You can F-O with your fake Liberal tag and all. Red states would be most affected because they can't take care of their toothless inbreds like yourself.

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When liberals say "Americans are stupid", I think they refer to people like you. Can you please look at the map of the United States and tell me what Red States and Blue States were affected by the hurricane? Then apologize to me.....no, apologize to your geography teacher, for being so stupid!

Romney's poor past decisions on important issues once again came back to haunt him.Now Mr. Romney simply refuses to answer the questions from reporters on his previous statements that he would eliminate FEMA.This is receiving a huge amount of coverage on cable news and the internet.Simply running away from reporters to avoid answering the questions will not make the issue disappear.The millions of Americans affected by hurricane Sandy and assisted by FEMA deserve the question answered Mr. Romney.It was also interesting to watch Governor Christie slam FOX News when they asked him if Romney would tour New Jersey him,and turn it into a political event.Governor Christie told Fox News he was a little busy trying to save his state......and he will tour the ravaged areas with president Obama and FEMA officials.

I fail to see how any reasonable approach to deficit reduction can be reached when Mitt, Paul, and the whole gang in the house have all pledged their allegiance to an unelected individual named after a muppet.

Serioulsy, how will ANYONE get a compromised and reasonable solution to deficit reduction if any and all tax increases are automatically off the table because of a absolutist pledge made to Grover? How is that possibly "bi-partisan"? And why does anyone thing that absolutism is a good thing for a representative?

The President has offered 10 to 1 cuts/ tax-increase and Republicans still refuse to talk. Romney's ONLY solution is cuts. It's a short-sighted and naive "solution" (which it's not a sloution at all because he won't cut enough to offset the loss of revenue he'll create, but that's another matter). There are more effective and less destructive alternatives available.

The federal government’s ability to respond to natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy currently bearing down on the East Coast, would be significantly hindered under a Romney-Ryan administration.

At least three times, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have publicly demanded that the federal government only disburse disaster relief funding if Congress agreed to offsetting budget cuts elsewhere. This would hold desperately-needed disaster relief funding hostage unless Congress agreed to cuts elsewhere in the budget, an extraordinarily difficult prospect even in normal circumstances.

Though GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) became the public face of such intransigence in the wake of natural disaster last year, Romney and Ryan have repeatedly made clear they agree with Cantor’s position.

Last year, after a major tornado and flood struck the United States, Romney was asked in a debate about federal disaster relief funding. Romney not only suggested shuttering FEMA and sending responsibility for disaster relief “back to the private sector,” but also said it would be “immoral” for the federal government to fund disaster relief efforts without cutting the budget elsewhere. “It makes no sense at all,” Romney concluded. Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/...

Ryan’s 2012 budget took a similar approach to disaster funding. As The Hill noted in May 2012, Ryan’s budget called for any disaster relief funding to “be fully offset within the discretionary levels provided in this resolution.” In other words, Congress would have to agree on cuts elsewhere in the budget if it wanted to dole out funds after a disaster. This idea was so far out of the mainstream that even Republican legislators abandoned the idea. Ryan opposed Obama’s efforts to build significant funding for disaster relief into the budget, a move intended to avoid the kinds of delays forced by Cantor and the Tea Party last year.

This is not a new position for Ryan. Long before he entered the political limelight, Ryan was still pushing a similar line on disaster funding. In a March 23, 2004 speech on the House floor, Ryan proposed that any emergency spending legislation, including disaster relief, be automatically offset by an “across-the-board” budget cut. After proposing legally-binding spending limits, Ryan bemoaned the fact that these emergency spending items “do not have to be paid for under our current budget rules.” Automatic cuts, Ryan explained, would help Congress offset funding that went to disaster relief.

Mitt Romney’s past comments about dismantling FEMA and privatizing disaster relief have come back to haunt him as Hurricane Sandy begins to wreak havoc on the East Coast. Still, one Republican strategist, Ron Bonjean, agrees with him. On CNN Monday morning, Bonjean, a private consultant who advises GOP congressional leaders, defended Romney, suggesting that even talking about federal disaster relief is politically toxic:

Most people don’t have a positive impression of FEMA and I think Mitt Romney was right on the button. But I don’t think anybody cares about that right now. I think people care about whether or not their power’s on, whether or not their basement’s going to be flooded. And I think that if the president gets too far in front of this and something goes wrong, people are going to remember, hey, my power’s not out, and the president’s talking about FEMA. I’m not a real big fan of FEMA. That could sway their vote.

Sandy has already caused severe flooding in the Northeast, hours before the worst of the storm is projected to hit. President Obama has declared a state of emergency in 7 states and DC after several governors’ urgent requests for federal aid to combat the storm. Though Bonjean fails to make the connection between FEMA’s services and people worrying about their power going out, the agency has already dispatched emergency power teams to try to reinforce vulnerable power grids before the storm hits and provided hundreds of generators and other back-up power sources. Americans are unfortunately well-acquainted with the agency, despite Bonjean’s insistence that they “don’t care” about it; a recent study of FEMA data found that, since 2006, 4 out of 5 Americans have been affected by weather-related disasters.

So what! I could make a case for every dollar the federal government spends. But it's time to get serious. If you want to pay for all that, you are talking significant, I mean big middle class increases. While I do not agree with everything Rep. Ryan says, I applaud him for being serious. He is the only one of the four running who is.